Camy Tam
A man from the mainland was arrested on Monday at the Barrier Gate checkpoint for cheating his sister and her friend out of HK$481,500, after helping the victims to withdraw cash from a local casino’s VIP room on their behalf in January, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chong Kam Leong said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
The 23-year-old jobless suspect is surnamed Pan.
According to Chong, a 35-year-old local woman and a 29-year-old mainland woman who are business partners reported to the Judiciary Police on January 17 that they had been cheated by the mainland woman’s younger brother out of HK$481,500.
They told the police that the mainland woman needed money urgently and asked her local business partner for help. Since both were in the mainland, they told the mainland woman’s younger brother to withdraw money from the local’s woman VIP room account in a casino in Cotai on her behalf and take the cash to the mainland.
Chong said the local woman received a message from the VIP room later that day, confirming that Pan had withdrawn the money. However, the two women lost contact with Pan and suspected that they had been cheated so that they decided to report the case to the police.
According to Chong, PJ officers discovered that Pan left Macau via the Barrier Gate checkpoint after he had withdrawn the money that day. He was arrested when he re-entered Macau on Monday via the Barrier Gate checkpoint. Under questioning, Pan claimed that he had gambled away all the money in a local casino on the day which he got the money.
Pan was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Monday, facing abuse of trust charges involving a considerable amount – officially defined as exceeding 150,000 patacas, according to Chong.
